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DISCOURSE 



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[DR. BRECKINRIDGE 



DELIVERED ON THE 



IN of ga&iral fmmiftafeH 



JANUARY 4, 1861. 



AT LEXINGTON, KY 



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R VLTJMORK 



•><>!l.\ W. WOODS, PRINTER. 






IN EXCHANGE 

JAN 5 - 1915 



sf. 



DISCOURSE. 



It is in circumstances, my friends, of terrible solemnity, that 
this great nation presents herself in an attitude of humiliation 
before the Lord God of Hosts ; in circumstances of great solemni- 
ty, that she stands before the bar of all surrounding nations, 
under that universal public opinion which gives fame or stamps 
with infamy ; and hardly less solemn than both, is her attitude 
at the bar of distant ages and especially our own posterity, that 
awful tribunal whose decrees can be reversed only by the decree 
of God. It is the first of these three aspects, either passing by 
in silence or touching very slightly the other two, that I am to 
consider before you now. And what I shall chiefly attempt to 
show is, that our duties can never be made subordinate to our 
passions without involving us in ruin, and that our rights can 
never be set above our interests without destroying both. 

In taking this direction, let us bear in mind that the procla- 
mation of the chief Magistrate of the Republic which calls us to 
this service, asserts, in the first place, that ruin is impending 
over our national institutions ; and asserts in the second place, 
that so far as appears to him no human resources remain that 
are adequate to save them ; and in the third place, that the 
whole nation according to his judgment ought to prostrate itself 
before God and cry to him for deliverance. Upon this I have 
to say, in the great name of God, and by the authority of Jesus 
Christ the Saviour of the world, these two things : First, that 
national judgments never come except by reason of national 
sins ; nor are they ever turned aside except upon condition of 
repentance for the sins which produced them ; and Secondly, 
that repentance for sin, as it is the absolute and universal, so it 
is the infallible condition of divine pardon and acceptance, not 
only in the case of individuals, but more obviously still and 
more immediately in the case of nations, since nations, as such, 
have no existence in a future life. Wherefore, if we are in the 
way of fearful evils we are also in the way of clear duty, and 
therein we may hope for assured deliverance in the degree, first, 
that every one will go before another in earnest endeavors to 
rectify in himself all that is abominable to God ; and, secondly, 
that every one will evince towards others, the forbearance which 
he desires that God should extend towards him. Wherefore, 
also, we may boldly say that the remedy from God to us need 
not be expected to manifest itself by means of political parties 



or by means of combinations of political leaders, or by means 
of new political compacts, or by means of additional legal en- 
actments, or by means of more explicit constitutional provisions ; 
but that it must come from God to us, and be made manifest 
through a profound movement in the source of all power in free 
governments, namely, first, in the hearts of individuals, men 
turning from their sins, their follies and their madness : and 
secondly, in the uprising of an irresistible impulse thus created, 
which over the length and breadth of the land shall array itself 
in the power of God against every endeavor to bring upon us the 
evils which we are imploring God to avert. 

The first and greatest of these evils that we beseech God to 
avert, and that we should strive with all our might to prevent, 
is the annihilation of the nation itself, by tearing it into frag- 
ments. Men may talk of rights perpetually and outrageously 
violated — they may talk of injuries that are obliged to be redress- 
ed they may talk about guarantees without which they can 

submit to no further peace — and there is doubtless much that 
has force and much more that is captivating to ardent minds 
in such expositions of our sad condition. For what problem 
half so terrible was ever agitated upon which it was not easy to 
advance much on every side of it ? I will not consume the short 
time allowed to me in examining such views. What I assert, 
in answer to them all is, that we have overwhelming duties and 
incalculable interests which dictate a special line of conduct, 
the chief aim of which should be the preservation of the Amer- 
ican Union, and therein of the American nation. 

To be more explicit, it seems to me that there are inestima- 
ble blessings connected with the preservation of our National 
Union; and that there are intolerable evils, involved in its de- 
struction. For the blessings : there is the blessing of peace 
amongst ourselves, there is the blessing of freedom to ourselves 
and to our posterity, there is the blessing of internal prosperity 
secured by that peace, and freedom, never before excelled, if at- 
tained, by any people; there is the blessing of national inde- 
pendence secured by our invincible strength, against all the 
powers of the earth combined, there is the blessing of our glo- 
rious example to all nations and to all ages ; there is the bless- 
ing of irresistible power to do good to all peoples, and to prevent 
evil over the face of the whole earth ; there is the blessing of 
an unfettered Gospel and an open Bible and a divine Saviour, 
more and more manifested in our whole national life as that life 
deepens and spreads, subduing and possessing the widest and the 
noblest inheritance ever given to any people, and overflowing 
and fructifying all peoples besides. It is the problem sought 
to be solved from the beginning of time, and, to say the least, 
the nearest approximation made to its solution, namely, the 
complete possession of freedom united with irresistible national 
force, and all directed to the glory of God and to the good of 



man. And this is that glorious estate now declared to be in 
fearful peril, and which we are called upon to beseech Grod to 
preserve unto us. 

On the other hand, the evils of rending this nation. Which 
of the blessings that I have enumerated — and I have enumera- 
ted only those that appeared to me to be the most obvious — 
which of these is there — peace, freedom, prosperity, indepen- 
dence, the glory of our example, the power to do good and to 
prevent evil, the opportunity to give permanent efficiency all 
over this continent, and in a certain degree all over this earth to 
the gospel of God ; which of these blessings is there that may 
not be utterly lost to vast portions of the nation — which of them 
that may not be jeoparded over this whole continent ; which of 
them is there that may not depart forevermore from us and our 
posterity in the attempt to destroy our oneness as a people, and 
in the results of that unparalleled self-destruction ? Besides all 
this, how obvious and how terrible are the evils over and above, 
which the very attempt begets, and which our after progress 
must necessarily make permanent if that attempt succeeds. 
First, we have already incurred the perils of universal bank- 
ruptcy before the first act is achieved by one of the least impor- 
tant of the thirty-three States. Secondly, we have already seen 
constitutional government both in its essence and in its form 
trampled under foot by the convention of that State ; and all 
the powers of sovereignty itself, both ordinary and extraordi- 
nary, assumed by it in such a manner that life, liberty and 
property have no more security in South Carolioa than any- 
where under heaven where absolute despotism or absolute an- 
archy prevails, except in the personal characters of the gentle- 
men who hold the power. Thirdly, we have already seen that 
small community preparing to treat with foreign nations, and 
if need be introduce foreign armies into this country : headlong 
in the career in which she disdains all counsel, scorns all con- 
sultation and all entreaty, and treats all ties, all recollections, 
all existing engagements and obligations as if her ordinance of 
secession had not only denationalized that community, but had 
extinguished all its past existence. Fourthly, we see the glo- 
rious flag of this Union torn down and a colonial flag floating 
in its place ; yea, we see that community thrown into paroxysms 
of rage, and the Cabinet at Washington thrown into confusion 
because in the harbor of Charleston our national flag instead of 
being still further dishonored, yet floats over a single tower ! 
What then did they expect, who sent to the harbor of Charles- 
ton, to occupy the national fortress there, the son of a companion 
of Washington, a hero whose veins are full of revolutionary 
blood, and whose body is covered with honorable scars won in 
the service of his country ? Why did they send that Kentucky 
hero there if they did not intend the place they put into his 
hands to be kept, to the last extremity ? But I need not en- 



large upon this terrible aspect of what is coming to us all if the 
Union is destroyed. These are but the beginnings of sorrows. 
The men and the parties who initiate the reign of lawless pas- 
sion, rarely escape destruction amid the storms they create, but 
are unable to control. Law comes from the depth of eternity, 
and in its sublime sway is the nixus of the universe. Institu- 
tions grow; they are not made. Desolated empires are never 
restored. All history furnishes no such example. If we desire 
to perish, all we have to do is to leap into this vortex of dis- 
union. If we have any just conception of the solemnity of this 
day, let us beseech God that our country shall not be torn to 
pieces ; and under the power of these solemnities let us quit our- 
selves like men in order to avert that most horrible of all na- 
tional calamities. 

Let us consider, in the next place, those rights, as they are 
called, by means of which, and in their extreme exercise, all the 
calamities that threaten us are to be brought upon us at any 
moment: nay, are to be so brought upon us that our destruction 
shall be perfectly regular, perfectly legal, perfectly constitution- 
al ! In which case a system like ours — a system the most en- 
during of all others, whether we consider the history of the past 
or the laws which enter into its composition — a system the hard- 
est of all others to be deranged, and the easiest of all to be read- 
justed when deranged ; such a system is alleged to have a se- 
cret in it, designed expressly to kill it, at the option of the small- 
est fragment of it. I allude to the claim of the right of Nullifi- 
cation and the claim of the right of secession as being Constitu- 
tional rights : and I desire to explain myself briefly in regard 
to them. 

According to my comprehension there is a thorough and fun- 
damental difference between the two. The power of nullifica- 
tion, supposing it to exist, would be an extreme right within 
the Union, and is necessarily temporary in its effect, and prompt- 
1\ tends to the termination of the difficulty upon which it arises. 
And this settlement may occur by the action of our complex 
svstem of government in various ways. It may be in the way 
of some compromise of existing difficulties ; or in the way of re- 
peal, by one party or the other, or in the modification of the ob- 
noxious laws ; or in the way of some judicial decision settling 
the difficulty. Or — which is the true remedy — instead of Nulli- 
fication, by an appeal to the people at the polls, who are the 
source of all power in free governments, and by obedience to 
their decisions when rendered — by voting, instead of fighting. 
Or at the worst, by an appeal to arms ; but even in that case 
the result necessarily secures the continuance of the pre-existing 
svstem of government on the restoration of peace ; let that peace 
be by victory on which side you please. The doctrine of Nulli- 
fication stands related to the doctrine of State Rights — precisely 
as the doctrine of Consolidation stands related to the old federal 



doctrine of a strong central Government. In both cases, the the- 
ory of a great party has been pushed to a logical absurdity, 
which subverted our political system. That the will of the 
greater part should prevail — and that the smaller parts should 
have the power of appeal to this will, at the polls — and in judg- 
ment upon every principle of civil and political liberty — was the 
ultimate form in which this great doctrine entered into 
the political creed of that old Republican party which came into 
power with Mr. Jefferson in 1801, and was expounded as they 
held it in those famous resolutions of Kentucky and Virginia in 
the latter part of the last century. Its connection with that 
whole theory of every mixed political system, is not only abso- 
lute but is vital. More especially is it so with our complex sys- 
tem. It has been carried, as it stands connected with the con- 
stitutional, and much more with the reserved rights of the 
States, to an extreme on that side, opposite to the extreme of Con- 
solidation. But even in its extremestform it bears no proportion 
in mischief to the doctrine of Secession. Considered in its true 
and original form, I judge it to be indispensable to the preser- 
vation of our political system ; and that the opposite mode of 
interpreting our political duties and rights and remedies termi- 
nates in subjugating the States to the General Government, and 
in subjugating both the General Government and the exposition 
of every political principle to the Supreme Court of the United 
States. The former system is natural and permanent — the lat- 
ter is absurd and invites rebellion. This great phenomenon has 
occurred in this country, that, by reason of the extraordinary 
ability of some of the advocates of the system which passed away 
in 1801, it has assumed a new form and a new life in general 
opinion; and seconded by the peculiar constitution of the Su- 
preme Court of the United States, the old Republican or Demo- 
cratic notions upon this great subject, though constantly tri- 
umphant in the country, have been constantly disallowed in the 
interpretations of that Court. I judge that the doctrine of Seces- 
sion is an extreme reaction against this Federal interpretation 
of the relations of the States to each other and to the nation. 
For when you arrive at an interpretation which is final and 
hateful to immense parties and interests ; and there is no reme- 
dy but arms, secession or absolute submission ; the expression 
of popular will against the interpretation you have made, brings 
society to a condition that in an excitable race and amongst a 
free people can hardly be expected to be safe or easy to be man- 
aged. You have therefore this perilous and extraordinary claim 
of the right of secession under this extreme reaction ; differing 
absolutely from the idea of the old States Rights party, and dif- 
fering absolutely even from nullification itself. 

Secession is a proceeding which begins by tearing to pieces 
the whole fabric of government, both social and political. It 
begins by rendering all redress of all possible evils utterly im- 



possible under the system that exists, for its very object is to 
destroy its existence. It begins by provoking war and render- 
ing its occurrence apparently inevitable, and its termination well 
nigh impossible. Its very design is not to reform the adminis- 
tration of existing laws, not to obtain their repeal or modifica- 
tion, but to annihilate the institutions of the country and to 
make many nations out of one. If it is the constitutional right 
of any State to do this, then we have no National Government 
and never had any. Then, also, it is perfectly idle to speak of 
new Constitutions, since the new Constitutions can have no more 
force than the Constitution already despised and disobeyed. 
Then, also, the possibility is ended — ended in the very theory of 
the case, and illustrated in the utter failure of its practice — of 
uniting republican freedom with national strength in any coun- 
try or under any form of government. But according to my be- 
lief, and according to the universal belief of the American peo- 
ple but a little while ago, no such right, legal or constitutional, 
as that of secession, does or can exist under any form of govern- 
ment, and least of all under such institutions as ours. 

And first of all, no State in this Union ever had any sover- 
eignty at all independent of and except as they were United 
States. When they speak of recovering their sovereignty, when 
they speak of returning to their condition as sovereigns in 
which they were before they were members of the confederacy 
called at first the United Colonies, and then the United States ; 
they speak of a thing that is historically without any founda- 
tion. They were not States, they were colonies of the British, 
the Spanish, the French, and the Dutch governments ; they 
were colonies granted by royal charters to particular individuals 
or particular companies. Pennsylvania was the estate, the 
property of William Penn ; Georgia the larger part, perhaps 
the whole of it, of General Oglethorpe. They were settled under 
charters to individuals and to companies — settled as colonies of 
foreign Kings and States by their subjects. As such they re- 
volted. As such, before their revolt, they united in a continen- 
tal government more or less complete. As such united colonies 
they pronounced that famous Declaration of Independence, which 
after a heroic struggle of seven years, still as united colonies, 
they made good. That great Washington who led that great 
war was the commander-in-chief for and in behalf of these uni- 
ted colonies. As such they were born States. The treaty of 
peace that made them independent States, was concluded with 
them all together — as United States. What sovereignty did 
Kentucky ever have except the sovereignty that she has as a 
State of these United States, born at the same moment a State 
of the American Union, and a separate sovereign State? We 
were a district of Virginia. We became a State and we became 
one of the United States at the Satne moment, for the same pur- 
pose, and for good and all. What I mean by this, is to point 



out the fact that the complex system of governmeno which we 
have in this country, did always, does now, and in the nature of 
the case, must contemplate these States as united into a com- 
mon government, and that common government as really a part 
of our political system, as the particular institutions of the sep- 
arate sovereignties are a part of our political system. And 
while, as you will observe, I have attempted, while repudiating 
the doctrine of nullification, to vindicate that doctrine of State 
rights, which as I firmly believe is an integral and indispensa- 
ble part of our political system ; yet on the other hand, the doc- 
trine that we are a nation and that we have a national govern- 
ment, is and always was just as truly a part of our system as 
the other. And our political system always stood as much upon 
the basis that we are a nation, as it stood upon the basis that 
that nation is composed of sovereign States. They were born 
into both relations ; so born that each State is equally and for- 
ever, by force of its very existence and the manner thereof, both 
a part of this American nation and also a sovereign State of it- 
self. The people therefore can no more legally throw off their 
national allegiance, than they can legally throw off their State al- 
legiance. Nor can any State, any more legally absolve the allegi- 
ance of a people to the nation, than the nation can legally ab- 
solve the allegiance due by the people to the State they live in. 
Either attempt considered in any legal, in any constitutional, in 
any historical light, is pure madness. 

Now the pretext of founding the right of secession, upon the 
right to change or abolish the government, which is constitu- 
tionally secured to the people of the nation and the States, seems 
to me, and I say it with all the respect due to others, to be both 
immoral and absurd. Absurd, since they who claim to exercise 
it are, according to the very statement of the case, but an insig- 
nificant minority of those in whom the real right resides. It is 
a right vested by G-od, and recognized by our constitutions as 
residing in the greater part of those who are citizens under the 
constitution, which they change or abolish. But, what in the 
name of God, and all the possible and all the imaginable arro- 
gance of South Carolina, could lead her to believe that she is the 
major part of all the people that profess allegiance to the consti- 
tution of the United States? And it is immoral, because it is 
trifling with the sound rights of others, with the most solemn 
obligations on our own part, and the most vital interests of all 
concerned. And it is both immoral and absurd in one, because 
as a political pretext, its use in this manner invalidates and 
renders perilous and odious, the grandest contribution of mod- 
ern times to the science of government, and therein to the peace 
of society, the security of liberty, and the progress of civiliza- 
tion, namely ; the giving constitutional validity to this natu- 
ral right of men to change or to abolish the government under 
which they live, by voting, when the major part see fit to do so. 



8 

It is trifling with this great natural right, legalized in all our 
American constitutions, fatally caricaturing and recklessly con- 
verting it into the most terrible engine of organized legal des- 
truction. More than that ; it is impossible in the very nature 
of the case and in the very nature of government, that any such 
legal power^ or any such constitutional right could exist ; be- 
cause its existence pre-supposes law to have changed its nature, 
to have become a mere device ; and pre-supposes government to 
have changed its nature and ceasing to be a permanent ordinance 
of God, to beeome a temporary instrument of evil in the hands 
of factions as they successively arise. Above all places under 
Heaven no such right of destruction can exist under our Ameri- 
can constitutions, since it is they that have devised this very 
remedy of voting instead of fighting ; they that have made this 
natural right a constitutional right ; they that have done it for 
the preservation and not for the ruin of society. And it has 
preserved it for more than seventy years, the noblest form of 
human society, in constant security, and it could if justly exer- 
cised preserve it forever. 

But let us go a little deeper still. It cannot be denied that 
the right of self-preservation, both in men and States, is a su- 
preme right. In private persons, it is a right regulated by law 
in all communities that have laws. Amongst nations, there is 
no common supreme authority, and it must be regulated in their 
intercourse with each other, by the discretion of each ; and arms 
are the final appeal. In our system of government, there is am- 
ple provision made. In all disputes between any State and a 
foreign nation, the General Government will protect and redress 
the State. In disputes between two States, the Supreme Court 
is the constitutional arbiter. It is only in disputes that may 
arise between the General Government and a particular State, 
that any serious difference of opinion as to the remedy, has man- 
ifested itself in this country ; and on that subject it is the less 
necessary that I add anything to what has been said when 
speaking of nullification, as the grounds of our existing difficul- 
ties are not between disaffected States and the General Govern- 
ment chiefly if at all ; but they are difficulties rather founded on 
opposite states of public opinion touching the institution of negro 
slavery, in the northern and in the southern States. 

It may be confidently asserted that if the power of nullifica- 
tion, or the power of secession, or both of them, were perfectly 
constitutional rights, neither of them should be, under any cir- 
cumstances, wantonly exercised. Nor should either of them, 
most especially the right of secession, ever be exercised except 
under extreme necessity. But if these powers, or either of them 
is a mere usurpation founded on no right whatever, then no 
State may resort to rebellion or revolution without, in the first 
place, such a necessary cause as may not be otherwise maintain- 
ed ; or, in the second place, without such a prospect of success 



9 

as justifies the evil of rebellion or revolution, or else such intol- 
erable evils as justify the most desperate attempts. Now it is 
my profound conviction that nothing has occurred, that nothing 
exists, which justifies that revolution which has occurred in 
South Carolina, and which seems to be impending in other 
southern States. Beyond all doubt, nothing has occurred of this 
description, connected with any other interest or topic, except 
that of negro slavery ; and connected with that, my deep assur- 
ance is, that the just and necessary cause of the slave States, 
may be otherwise maintained tban by secession, revolution or 
rebellion ; nay, that it may be incomparably better maintained 
otherwise ; nay, that it cannot be maintained in that way at all 
and that the attempt to do so will be fatal as regards the avow- 
ed object, and pregnant with incalculable evils besides. 

In such discussions as these, the nature of the institution of 
slavery is perfectly immaterial. So long as the Union of the 
States survives, the constitutional guaranty and the federal 
power, which have proved adequate for more than seventy 
years, are that much added to whatever other force States or 
sections may possess to protect their rights. — Nor is there, in 
the nature of the case, any reason why States with slaves and 
States without slaves, should not abide together in peace, as 
portions of the same great nation, as they have done from the 
beginning. The unhallowed passions of men : the fanaticism 
of the times ; the mutual injuries and insults which portions of 
the people have inflicted on each other ; the cruel use which 
political parties have made of unnatural and transient popular 
excitements ; and, I must add, the unjust, offensive, and uncon- 
stitutional enactments by various State Legislatures at the 
North ; the repeal of the Missouri Compromise by Congress ; 
the attempt of the Supreme Court to settle political principles 
deemed to be of vast importance by all parties, in the Dred 
Scott case, which principles were not in the case at all; the sub- 
sequent conduct of the Federal Government and of the people in 
Kansas ; the total overthrow of the Whig and American par- 
ties, the division and defeat of the Democratic party, and the 
triumph of the Republican party ; the ordinance of secession of 
South Carolina ; the agitation pervading the whole nation, es- 
pecially the greater part of the Southern States ; and to crown 
all, and if possible to make all desperate, the amazing conduct 
of the President of the United States amidst these great disor- 
ders ; this is the sad outline of this slavery agitation, the pos- 
ture of which for a moment is thus exhibited, no one knowing 
how soon new and fatal steps may hurry us still farther. What 
I assert in the face of so much that is painful and full of peril, 
and what I confidently rely will be the verdict of posterity, is 
that all this, terrible as it is, affords no justification for the se- 
cession of any single State of the Union— none for the disruption 
of the American Union. They who make the attempt, will find 



10 

in it no remedy for the evils from which they flee. They who 
goad others to this fatal step, will find that they have them- 
selves erred exceedingly. They who have had the lead in hoth 
acts of madness, have no hope for good from coming ages, half 
so great, as that they may he utterly forgotton. Posterity will 
receive with scorn every plea that can he made for thirty mil- 
lions of free people, professing to he Christian, in extenuation 
of the unparalleled folly of their self destruction, by reason that 
they could not deal successfully with three or four millions of 
African slaves, scattered amongst them. Oh ! everlasting in- 
famy, that the children of Washington did not know how to be 
free ! — Oh ! degradation still deeper, that children, of God did 
not know how to be just and to forbear with one another ! 

It is said, however, it is now too late. — The evil is already 
done. South Carolina has already gone. Florida, it is most 
likely went yesterday, or will go to day, even while we are 
pleading with one another and with God to put a better mind 
in her. Soon, it may be possible within the present month, all 
the Cotton States will go. We, it is added, by reason of being 
a Slave State, must also go. Our destiny, they say, our inter- 
ests, our duty, our all, is bound up with theirs, and we must go 
together. If this be your mind, distinctly made up, then the 
whole services of this clay are a national mockery of God ; a na- 
tional attempt to make our passionate impulses assume the dig- 
nity of divine suggestions, and thus seduce the Ruler of the Uni- 
verse with complicity with our sins and follies, through which 
all our miseries are inflicted upon us. Let it be admitted that 
a certain number of States, and that considerable, will attempt 
to form a Southern Confederacy, or to form as many new sover- 
eignties as there are seceding States. Let it be assumed that 
either of these results is achieved, and that either by way of 
peace or by war. Let all be admitted. — What then ? Thirteen 
States by their delegates formed the present Constitution, more 
than seventy years ago. By the terms of the Constitution itself 
it was to be enforced when any nine of these thirteen States 
adopted it — whether by convention of their people or otherwise, 
is immaterial to the present matter. Thirteen States made the 
Constitution by their delegates. A clause is inserted in it that 
it shall go into effect when any nine of the thirteen States adopt 
it, let any four refuse as they might. If they had refused what 
would have happened would have been, that these four States, 
born States, and born United States, by the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, by the war of the Revolution, by the peace with Great 
Britain, and by the articles of confederation, would by a common 
agreement among the whole thirteen, have refused to go further 
or to make any stronger national government ; while the other 
nine would have gone further and made that stronger national 
government. — But such was the desire of all parties that there 
should be no separation of the States at all, that the whole thir- 



11 

teen unanimously adopted tlie new Constitution, putting a 
clause into it that it shonld not go into effect unless a majority 
so great as nine to four would sign it. I say if a minority of 
States had not adopted the new Constitution, it would have oc- 
curred, that they would have passed by common consent into a 
new condition, and for the first time have become sovereign 
States. As you well know none of them refused permanently. 
What I make this statement for, is to show that, taking that 
principle as just and permanent, as clearly laid down in the 
Constitution, it requires at least eleven States out of the exist- 
ing thirty-three States to destroy, or affect in the slightest de- 
gree, the question as to whether or not the remaining States are 
the United States of America, under the same Constitution. 
Twenty-two States, according to that principle, left after eleven 
had seceded, would be as really the United States of America 
under that Federal Constitution, as they were before, according 
to the fundamental principle involved in the original mode of 
giving validity to the Constitution. Kentucky would still be as 
really one of these United States of America, as she was at first 
when, as a district of Virginia, who was one of the nine adopt- 
ing States, she became, as such district, a part thereof. — And 
by consequence, a secession of less than eleven States, can in no 
event, and upon no hypothesis, even so much as embarrass 
Kentucky in determining for herself, what her duty, her honor 
and her safety require her to do. 

This fact is so perfectly obvious, that I presume if the six New 
England States were to revolt, and to establish a new confeder- 
acy, there is not a man in the State of Kentucky who would be 
led thereby to suppose that our relations with the Union and the 
Constitution were in the slightest degree affected ; or that they 
were on that account under the slightest obligation to revolt 
also. It may sound harsh, but I am very much inclined to 
think that there are many thousands of men in Kentucky who 
might be apt to suppose that the secession of the New England 
States would be a capital reason why nobody else should 
secede. It is the principle, however, which I am attempting to 
explain. 

The answer to this view, I am aware is, that we are a Slave 
State, and that our relations are therefore necessarily different 
with respect to other Slave States, as compared with the Free 
States, or with the nation at large. The reply to which is various : 
First. The Institution of Slavery, as it exists in this country, 
presents a threefold, and very distinct aspect. First, the aspect 
of it in those States whose great staples are rice, sugar and cot- 
ton, commonly and well enough expressed by calling them the 
Cotton States. Then the aspect of it presented by those States 
in portions of which these fabrics are raised, and in other por- 
tions of which they are not ; which we may well enough call 
the mixed portion of the Slave States. And then its aspect in 



12 

those slave States which are not producers of those great staples 
in the midst of which, and out of which these great commotions 
come. What I assert is, that the relation of slavery to the 
community, and the relation of the community by reason of sla- 
very to the General Government and the world, is widely differ- 
ent in all three of these classes of States. The relation of sla- 
very to the community, to the Government, and to our future, 
in Missouri, in Kentucky, in "Virginia, in Maryland, in Dela- 
ware, is evidently different from the relation of slavery in all 
these respects in Louisiana, in South Carolina, and in all the 
other Cotton States. In the meantime, also, the relation is dif- 
ferent from both of those, wherein it exists in what I have called 
the mixed States ; in Arkansas, part of which is a farming 
country, and a part of which thoroughly planting; in Ten- 
nessee, part cotton, and the eastern part a mountainous farming 
country; in Texas and North Carolina, where similar facts ex- 
ist ; and perhaps in some other States. 

What I desire is that you get the idea I have of the matter ; 
that while it is true that all the slave States have certain ties 
and sympathies between them which are real, and ought not to 
be broken ; yet, on the other hand, it is extremely easy to carry 
this idea to a fatal and a false extent, and to ruin our ourselves 
forever under the illusion begotten thereby. In Kentucky, the 
institution of slavery exists about in the proportion of one 
slave to four white people, and the gap between the two races is 
widening at every census. In South Carolina there are about 
five slaves to three white persons, and the increment is on the 
slave side. In the Cotton States, I know of no way in which 
the institution of slavery can be dealt with at all, except by 
keeping the relation as it stands, as an integral portion of the 
body politic, unmanageable except in the present relation of the 
negro to the white man : and, in this posture, it is the duty of 
the nation to protect and defend the Cotton States. In regard 
to Kentucky, the institution of slavery is in such a position 
that the people can do with it whatever they may see fit, both 
now, and at any future period, without being obliged, by reason 
of it, to resort to any desperate expedient, in any direction. 

The state of things I have sketched necessarily produces a 
general resemblance, indeed, because slavery is general — but, at 
the same time innumerable diversities, responsive to the very 
condition of slavery, of its prospects, and of its relative in the 
body politic, in the different slave States. And you never com- 
mitted a greater folly than you will commit if, disregarding 
these things, you allow this single consideration that you are a 
slave State — to swallow up every other consideration, and con- 
trol your whole action in this great crisis. We in Kentucky 
are tolerant of opinion. Inform yourselves of what is passing, 
of an opposite character, throughout South Carolina : and re- 
flect on the change that must pass on you, before you would be 



13 

prepared to tear down the most venerable institutions, to insult 
the proudest emblems of your country's glory, and to treat con- 
stitutions and laws as if they were play-things for children ; be- 
fore you are prepared to descend from your present noble pos- 
ture, and surrender yourself to the guidance and dictation of 
such counsels and such statesmen as rule this disunion move- 
ment. Nothing seems to me more obvious, and nothing is more 
important to be pressed on your attention at this moment, than 
that the non-cotton States stand in a position radically differ- 
ent in all respects from the position in which the Cotton States 
stand, both with regard to the institution of slavery, and with 
regard to the balance of the nation. The result is that all these 
States, the Cotton States, and the mixed States, and the non- 
cotton slave States, and the free States, may enjoy peace and 
may enjoy prosperity under a common government, and in a 
common Union, as they have done from the begining ; where 
the rights of all, and the interests of all may be respected and 
protected, and yet where the interests of every portion must be 
regulated by some general consideration of the interests which 
are common to everybody. On the other hand, in a confedera- 
cy where cotton is the great idea and end, it is utterly impossi- 
ble for the mixed, much more for the non-cotton States, to 
protect adequately any of their rights, except the right of slave- 
ry, to carry out any of their purposes except purposes connected 
with slavery, to inaugurate any system of policy or even to be 
free, otherwise than as they servilely follow the lead, and bow 
to the rule of the Cotton States. The very instant you enter a 
confederacy in which all is regulated and created by the supreme 
interest of cotton, every thing precious and distinctive of you, is 
jeoparded! Do you want the slave trade re-opened? Do you 
want free trade and direct taxation ? Do you want some mil- 
lions more of African cannibals thrown amongst you broadcast 
throughout the whole slave States? Do you want to begin a 
war which shall end when you have taken possession of the 
whole Southern part of this continent down to the isthmus of 
Darien ? If your design is to accept the principles, purposes 
and policy, which are openly avowed in the interest of secession, 
and which you see exhibited on a small scale, but in their es- 
sence, in South Carolina ; if that is your notion of regulated 
freedom and the perfect security of life and property ; if that is 
your understanding of high national prosperity, where the great 
idea is more negroes, more cotton, direct taxes, free imports, 
from all nations, and the conquest of all outlaying land that 
will bring cotton ; then, undoubtedly, Kentucky is no longer 
what she has been, and her new career, beginning with seces- 
sion, leads her far away, from her strength and her renown. 

The second suggestion I have to make to you is, that if the 
slave line is made the line of division, all the slave States sece- 
ding from the Union, and all the free States standing unitedly 



14 

by the Union ; what I assert in that case is, that the possibility 
of the perpetuity of negro slavery in any border State terminates 
at once. In our affected zeal for slavery, we will have taken the 
most effectual means of extinguishing it ; and that in the most 
disastrous of all possible ways. — On the contrary, if this Union 
is to be saved, it is by the cordial sympathy of the border States 
on one side, and on the other side of the slave line that it must 
be saved. We have nothing to hope from the extreme States 
on either side ; nothing from the passionate violence of the ex- 
treme South — nothing from the turbulent fanaticism of the ex- 
treme North. It is along that slave line — and in the spirit of 
mntual confidence, and the sense of a common interest of the 
people on the north and on the south of that line ; that the na- 
tion must seek the instruments of its safety. It is Ohio, India- 
na, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, on the one side ; and 
Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri — God send 
that I might add with confidence Tennessee and North Carolina — 
on the other side ; these are the States that are competent to 
save this Union. Nothing, therefore, can be more suicidal, than 
for the border slave States to adopt any line of conduct which 
can justly deprive them of the sympathy and confidence of 
the border free States — now largely possessed by them. — And 
nothing is more certain than that a patriotic devotion to the 
Union, and a willingness to do all that honorable men should 
do, or moderate men ask, in order to preserve it — is as strongly 
prevalent at this moment, among the people of the border free 
States, as amongst those of the border slave States. The great 
central States I have enumerated — must ncessarily control the 
fate both of the nation and of the continent — whenever they act 
in concert ; and the fate, both of the nation and the continent, 
is utterly inscrutable after the division of them on the slave line — 
except that we know that when Sampson is shorn of his strength, 
the enemies of Israel and of God will make the land desolate. 
Fronting on the Atlantic Ocean through many degrees of lati- 
tude, running back across the continent so as to include an area 
larger than all Western Europe, and finer than any of equal 
extent upon the globe, embracing a population inferior to none 
on earth, and sufficiently numerous at present to constitute a 
great nation ; it is this immense power, free, to a great extent, 
from the opposite and intractable fanaticisms of the extreme States 
on both sides of it, that is charged with the preservation of our 
national institutions, and with them our national power and 
glory. There are two aspects of the case thus put, — in either of 
which success by peaceful means, is impossible : first, if these 
great central States fail to apprehend this part of the great mis- 
sion committed to them : secondly, if the Cotton States, following 
the example of South Carolina — or the Northern States adhering 
to extreme purposes in the opposite direction — by either means 
render all peaceful adjustment impossible. 



15 

But even in that case, the mission of these great States is not 
ended. If under the curse of God, and the madness of the ex- 
treme northern and southern States, the preservation of the 
Union should be impossible ; then it belongs to this immense 
central power, to re-construct the nation, upon the slave line 
as its central idea ; and thus perpetuate our institutions our 
principles, and our hopes, with an unchanged nationality. For 
even they who act in the mere interests of slavery, ought to see 
that after the secession of the cotton States, the border slave 
States are obliged even for the sake of slavery, to be destroyed, 
or to adhere to the Union as long as any Union exists ; and 
that if the Union were utterly destroyed, its re-construction up- 
on the slave line, is the solitary condition on which slavery can 
exist in security any where, or can exist at all in any border 
State. 

I have considered three possible solutions of the existing 
state of things. The preservation of the Union as it is ; the 
probable secession of the cotton slave States, and the effect 
thereof upon the Union, and upon the course Kentucky ought 
to take ; the total destruction of the Union, and its reconstruc- 
tion upon the slave line. I have considered the whole matter, 
from the point of view understood to be taken by the President 
of the United States ; namely : that he judges there is no pow- 
er in the General Government to prevent, by force, its own dis- 
solution by means of the secession of the States ; and I have 
done this, because however ruinous or absurd any one may sup- 
pose the views of the President to be, it is, nevertheless, under 
their sway that the first acts of our impending revolutions are 
progressing. Under the same helpless aspect of the General 
Government, there remain two more possible solutions of the 
posture and duty of Kentucky, and other States similarly situa- 
ted. The first of these is, that in the progress of events, it 
may well become the border slave States to unite themselves in- 
to a separate confederacy ; the second is, that it may well be- 
come Kentucky, under various contingencies, to assume a sepa- 
rate sovereign position, and act by herself. Having clearly sta- 
ted my own conclusions, I will only say that the first of these 
two results is not one to be sought as desirable in itself, but on- 
ly as an alternative to be preferred to more dangerous arrange- 
ments. For my unalterable conviction is, that the slave line is 
the only permanent and secure basis of a confederacy for the 
slave States, and especially for the border slave States, and that 
the union of free and slave States, in the same confederacy, is 
the indispensable condition of the peaceful and secure existence 
of slavery. As to the possible isolation of Kentucky, this also, 
it seems to me, is not a result to be sought. If it should occur 
as the alternative to evils still greater, Kentucky ought to em- 
brace it with calmness and dignity, and, awaiting the progress 
of events, show by her wisdom, her courage, her moderation, 



%6e. - 

16 

her invincible rectitude, both to this age and to all that are to 
come, how fully she understood in the midst of a gainsaying and 
backsliding generation, that no people ever performed anything 
glorious who did not trust God, who did not love their country, 
and who were not faithful to their oaths. 

It seems to me, therefore, that the immediate duty of Ken- 
tucky may be clearly stated in very few words : 

First. To stand by the Constitution and the Union of the 
country, to the last extremity. 

Second. To prevent, as for the moment, the impending and 
immediate danger, all attempts to seduce her, all attempts to 
terrify her, into the taking of any steps inconsistent with her 
own constitution and laws — any step disregarded of the consti- 
tution and laws of the United States, any step which can pos- 
sibly compromise her position, or draw her on otherwise than 
by her own free choice deliberately expressed at the polls, accord- 
ing to her existing laws and constitution, whereby she will 
choose her own destiny. 

Third. To settle in her heart that the rending of this Uni- 
on the slave line is, for her, whatever it may be for others, the 
most fatal issue that the times can have ; and the doing this in 
such a way as to subject her to the dominion of the cotton States 
for all time to come, is the very worst form of that most fatal 
issue. 

After all, my friends, after all, we have the great promise of 
God that all things shall work together for good to them that 
love him. I do not know but that it may be the mind of God 
and his divine purpose to break this Union up, and to make of 
it other nations, that shall at last he more powerful than it, uni- 
tedly, would have been. I do not know, I do not pretend to 
say, how the Lord will use the passions of men to glorify his 
name. He restrains the remainder of wrath, and will cause 
the wrath of man to praise him. We have his divine assu- 
rance that all nations that have gone before us, and all that 
will follow us, and we ourselves, by our rise, by our progress, 
and alas ! by our decoy and ruin, are but instruments of his in- 
finite purpose, and means in his adorable providence, whereby 
the everlasting reign of Messiah, the Christ of God, is to be 
made absolute and universal. 

Great then, is our consolation, as we tremble for our country, 
to be confident in our Lord ! Great is our comlort, as we be- 
wail the miseries which have befallen our glorious inheritance, 
to know that the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth ! Infinitely 
precious is the assurance, amidst the trials now impending, and 
the woes which threaten us, that the heroic self-devotion with 
which our personal duty is discharged, is one part of our fitness 
to become partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light ! 



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